Trends with benefits, This American Life drinks the kool aide.

[MADem]

23. CPB does. And they have oversight over both PBS and NPR. Background....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

WASHINGTON, May 15 - Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

Top officials at NPR and member stations are upset as well about the corporation's decision to appoint two ombudsmen to judge the content of programs for balance. And managers of public radio stations criticized the corporation in a resolution offered at their annual meeting two weeks ago urging it not to interfere in NPR editorial decisions....Last month, the corporation's board, which is dominated by Republicans named by President Bush, told the staff at a meeting that it should prepare to redirect the relatively modest number of grants available for radio programs away from national news, officials at the corporation and NPR said.

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/media/12npr.html

Times Executive Resigns to Lead NPR


The network has gone through several high-level power struggles in recent years, including clashes with Bush administration appointees at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who suggested that NPR had a liberal bias. In 2006, it pushed its top news executive into a lesser job, and last March, the NPR board forced out Kenneth Stern just 18 months after naming him chief executive.

In 2003 Bush appointed Kenneth Tomlinson, director of the Voice of America under President Reagan, to head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the congressionally chartered caretaker of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). Soon after his appointment, Tomlinson determined that it was necessary to restore ideological "balance" to public broadcasting, and launched a series of broadsides against PBS, NPR and even the CPB itself.

Tomlinson has surrounded himself with conservative partisans, including a Bush White House communications official, with a scheme to change public broadcasting to suit their political agenda. Tomlinson replaced a non-partisan professional chief executive at CPB with Ken Ferree, the top media adviser to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell. Ferree was the chief architect of a failed effort to dismantle the FCC rules that prevent media concentration. This week, Tomlinson was successful in pushing through the appointment of Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, to run CPB.

Conservatives on Capitol Hill and on the CPB's board targeted legendary broadcaster and popular PBS journalist Bill Moyers, demanding that he be "dealt with." In response, Tomlinson secretly hired an outside consultant last year to track the political leanings of the guests on "Now With Bill Moyers." Moyers resigned in December and funding for the news program was subsequently halved.

In contrast, the Wall Street Journal, which has frequently called for the elimination of government funding for public broadcasting, is now being sponsored and promoted by the CPB to espouse conservative, pro-business views via a new weekly program featuring the Journal's editors....

http://eshoo.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112

http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/4149_Previous_Version_2007-06-01.pdf

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The CPB serves as an umbrella organization for public television and radio
broadcasting. The CPB is a nonprofit private corporation and is guided by a 9-member
board of directors, of which the members are appointed by the President with the advice
and consent of the Senate. The directors serve for staggered six-year terms. Although its
creation as a private nonprofit corporation was motivated by the desire to eliminate
political influence, it is required to make reports to Congress and submit to audits. The
CPB’s principal function is to receive and distribute government contributions (or federal
appropriations) to fund national programs and to support qualified public radio and
television stations based on legislatively mandated formulas. The bulk of these funds are
to provide Community Service Grants (or CSGs) to stations that meet specified eligibility
criteria, including the amount of matching funds they receive from non-federal sources.
By law, the CPB is authorized to exercise minimum control of “program content or other
activities” of local stations. The CPB is prohibited from owning or operating any of the
primary facilities used in broadcasting. In addition, it may not produce, disseminate, or
schedule programs. In November 2005, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Chairman of the CPB
Board of Directors, resigned shortly before a CPB Inspector General’s report was
released, critical of his use of CPB contract money. The current president and CEO of
CPB is Patricia S. Harrison, appointed by the board in June 2005.

Overall, 15.6% of all public television and radio broadcasting funding comes from
the federal appropriations that CPB distributes. However, among individual public
broadcasting stations, the amount of federal dollars that contributes to a station’s annual
budget depends on whether it is a television or radio station, the funds it receives from
non-federal sources, the number and extent of broadcast transmitters required to service
its coverage area, and the extent a station is serving rural areas and minority audiences.

It will take a decade or more to get the crap out of public radio and television. When there are people on boards that control purse strings, they find ways to plant seeds downstream.